


Cosmic Love

by warqueenfuriosa



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Drama, F/M, Fluff, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9216446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warqueenfuriosa/pseuds/warqueenfuriosa
Summary: So this is death. The pain slips away and for a moment, one blessed, beautiful moment, the only thing Jyn feels is Cassian's arms around her, warm and safe and solid. Then there is no more and she's floating, shattered into a thousand pieces. In the middle of oblivion, in the darkness soft and cold, comes an echo...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Florence and the Machine's, "Cosmic Love"

This is what death feels like.

The pain comes, blinding and impossible all at once, pain unlike anything Jyn had ever felt in her life. And she had survived so much pain. A broken heart many times over, pieced together only to be torn and bleeding again. The bittersweet victories and horrors of war at the cost of so many lives. And maybe…maybe through the beautiful mess that is love, here, at the end…

She wants to scream but she doesn’t. There’s no breath in her lungs anymore, sucked away by the flames and the heat and the burn. To scream means to fight and she’s done enough of that. Enough for a lifetime.

As quickly as it comes, an assault on every one of her senses, the pain is gone. And for a moment, one blissful, perfect, heavenly moment, the only thing she feels is Cassian’s arms around her, warm and solid and safe. For one moment, she’s at peace.

Then there is no more. Nothing.

She’s floating, coming apart, falling, tiny pieces shattered into the dusky ink of oblivion. The planets are distant, miniscule and harmless, mere pinpricks of color against the galaxy, freckled with stars. It’s cold here, not above, not below, just…floating. Watching. The universe spins on, timeless and constant and changing all at once.

The darkness consumes her like a cloak, thick as velvet, and cold, so, so cold. Not the bitter bite of autumn cold. And not the icy promise of a cruel coming winter. This cold is complete. It seeps through her on a sigh of longing, to feel warm again, to feel the pulse of life coursing through her veins.

Light shimmers in the distance in thousands of colors, across thousands of stars and thousands of planets. It’s too far to touch, too far to feel, a kaleidoscope of life miles and miles and miles…away…

A thrum echoes around her, a mere whisper in the stillness, the silence that sings on a lonely, solitary note. Jyn waits, listening.

There. Again, a thrumming, low and gentle.

She can’t hope for the welcome sound of the thrumming beat, whatever it may be. She can’t feel the ache of want and wanting. To break the silence that roars around her yet whispers too, whispers of the life she had, the memories that stayed with her after the blast, after the pain, and into the cold stillness she floats in now.

But she waits all the same.

She’ll do a lot of that up here…

down here…

…just…

...here.

Floating.

Another microscopic particle of the universe, timeless and constant and changing, all at once.

The thrumming echo doesn’t come again, not for a long time. Jyn doesn’t really forget about it. She can’t forget and she can’t remember here in the cold and the ink black. The thrumming echo simply isn’t there anymore and the silence spills in to replace it, steady and unbreakable. And she aches with a pressure, a pull. For what she doesn’t know. To live is impossible. To feel can’t be done. But she aches all the same, a pulse somewhere inside her non-existent body she can never reach and never ease.

In the distance, so far, far away, down the shadowed tunnel of darkness where the burst of life tangles together, a star shrinks in on itself then explodes, beautiful in its destruction, awesome in its power, wrenching in its death.

Somehow Jyn realizes - not truly thinking, having no mind to think with - that this is the passage of time where life still exists. The destruction of a planet, the collapse of a star, the extinguished breath of a life fallen to make room for the new.

But how much time has passed?

A minute?

Maybe two?

A decade?

Lifetimes?

Jyn is still floating. She’ll always be floating. Up here.

Down here.

Just…here.

Life untouchable, darkness soft and cold, with the breath of her memories for company and the sigh of silence…

_Thrum._

How long has it been since she heard that sound? She can’t remember and she can’t forget. She can’t feel the burn of wanting to hear it again. But she waits for it too. Waits and floats.

Through the cold and the dark and the endlessness of the universe, it’s there. A brush of warmth. A surge of emotion so strong, so foreign after the blankness and the darkness and the emptiness of floating that Jyn wants to cry. But she is nothing with no tears to give, only particles, only shattered pieces of the universe.

The warmth grows, sliding over her, wrapping around her, comfortable and easy and so very…very…familiar….

“Cassian,” she whispers with no mouth to speak and no body to ache with want or longing or need. But she whispers it again with the remembrance of a smile.

_“Cassian.”_

In the midst of the endless universe, she hears him with no ears to hear and no body to long for him. She still hears him.

“I’m with you, Jyn,” he says, the memory of a smile in his echo. “All the way.”

_Thrum._

She knows now, what that sound is in the stillness. Not a memory but a particle, an atom, too tiny in the vast black hole of oblivion. A particle so strong, so loud, so steadfast, it soars through life, through death, through galaxy upon galaxy and into this…here….

Cassian’s heartbeat.

More warmth wraps around Jyn and she welcomes it because she knows what this is now, this warmth, this thrumming heartbeat. This is Cassian. Even in death, even in the nothingness of the universe, he is with her.

All the way.

“Welcome home,” he whispers.


End file.
